


zero, ergo sum

by nisakomi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Cat Ears, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 19:01:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8256905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/pseuds/nisakomi
Summary: Mingyu holds his tail the same way Wonwoo plays his cards - close to the chest.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shua_hui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shua_hui/gifts).



> Side: Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Xu Ming Hao | The8.
> 
> This was originally inspired by 유겸/해풀's minwon art gift to 레기님 which can be found [here](http://sungrass.tistory.com/112). Those images were NOT used as reference so the descriptions will not match up but they are very pretty pictures! 
> 
> You may consider this a Loveless AU only to the extent that in this universe everyone is born with cat ears and a tail until they lose their innocence/achieve adulthood. There is absolutely no other resemblance to Loveless, however, and there are no large age gaps in the relationships nor is there any fighting. 
> 
> Finally, while it is not explicitly described, there are depictions of underage characters wanting sex and/or being sexually aware (e.g. wet dreams). If that makes you uncomfortable, please do not proceed.

   

  

When Mingyu is ten, the first responders rush Mrs. Park into an ambulance while holding an oxygen mask to her face. He watches the incident unfold from across the road, standing in front of his bedroom window, and clutches his tail to his chest while watching her bushy one, streaked more white than not, twitch feebly against the stretcher.

Five weeks later, the Jeon family moves into the old Park house.

 

* * *

 

“Hi, I’m Kim Mingyu! I live across the street!”

Mr. Jeon reaches down to take the boxes of braised mackerel, seafood pancake, and fermented squid from Mingyu’s hands. Mingyu smiles while bowing his head but when he looks up, his lips slide firmly shut again. Behind Mrs. Jeon, a boy is staring at his teeth. The boy turns his head to the side, cupping the hand not holding another, younger, boy’s hand and whispers something Mingyu can’t decipher.

“Why what a lovely gift! Please thank your parents for us,” says Mr. Jeon.

Mingyu wants to tell him that his parents didn’t really do much – it was him and his grandmother who made the side-dishes – but before he can get to it, Mrs. Jeon is pushing the two boys forward and telling them to play.

“You have really pointy teeth,” says the older one after they’ve circled around to their backyard. He’s no longer holding onto the younger boy’s hand but the two of them stand right beside each other on the raised bricks surrounding the small flower garden.

Mingyu shrugs and swings his tail idly behind him, drawing himself up to his full height, which is about the same as the tallest of the two boys, even though he’s a step below them.

“Like a dog’s.” The boy bares his own teeth, biting down on his lower lip, but it’s not very menacing. He pokes at the tip of one canine with the pad of a finger, looking thoughtfully off to the side before squinting at Mingyu. “It’s kinda neat.”

“Yeah?” Mingyu’s ears perk up, the cat ones on top of his head that don’t really help him ear anything, and his tail stops moving.

“Yeah. I’m Wonwoo. This is Bo—”

“—I can speak for myself! I’m Bohyuk,” says the younger, and when he smiles at Mingyu it’s with gaps in his teeth. “He’s not even that much older than me, you know, he just pretends to be because he thinks being called ‘mature’ by the grownups is cool.” Bohyuk has the prettiest patterning on his tail that Mingyu’s seen yet. It’s thick and round and covered in tufts of orange and black and white all mixed together like a mosaic, and the variety of colors extends to the fur of his ears, fitting in neatly with the strands of brassy blond and black in his hair.

“I don’t want to be called ‘mature’ because it’s cool,” Wonwoo snorts. “I want to be mature to be mature. Forget it, you’ll never understand.” Where his brother’s coloring is loud and boisterous, Wonwoo’s tail and ears and hair are all a smooth greenish-black, the color of the sea where Mingyu’s grandfather owns a cabin, and Wonwoo’s eyes are just as turbulent. The end of his tail is wide and fluffy, and although he holds it at a distance, it seems to curve protectively around Bohyuk, as if waiting to catch him should he fall.

“Yeah yeah, so you say. Hey, whaddya bring over?”

“Bohyuk! You shouldn’t ask things like that.”

“What’s the big deal?” Bohyuk shrugs. “I mean, he already knows, and we’ll find out eventually.”

“Just some stuff I made with my grandmother,” Mingyu says quickly, trying to ward off any arguments. “Seafood pancakes, stuff like that.”

Bohyuk’s eyes squeeze shut with the breadth of his grin, and his tail spins excitedly behind him, making thwapping sounds every time it accidentally gets too low and brushes the ground. Wonwoo’s tail drops to keep the topsoil from flying everywhere. “Great! Wonwoo hates seafood so I’ll get to eat all of them myself.”

“You hate seafood?” Mingyu asks, aghast. Marinated crabs, jellyfish salad, glazed salmon…he loves seafood.

Wonwoo quirks one corner of his mouth. “It’s not a big deal. I just won’t eat them.”

“But…” Mingyu trails off and scratches the back of one drooping ear. They definitely still have flour left although he can’t remember whether they used up all of last year’s kimchi. “It wouldn’t be fair if you don’t get to have some. I’ll make you kimchi pancakes and bring them tomorrow, so that way you get to eat too.”

Wonwoo raises an eyebrow.

“I make killer kimchi pancakes. Promise.”

 

* * *

 

They’ve finished the old kimchi. Mingyu sneaks some of a more recent batch out of a huge glass jar, chopping and mixing it into the rest of the ingredients for the batter when his grandmother is taking her afternoon nap. It’s not that he’s stealing kimchi, but he knows she’d yell at him that what he’s using isn’t ripe enough and if it’s not ripe enough it’s not quite the right sourness, and if they’re not quite the right sourness, yadda yadda. He’s thought ahead and added extra kimchi juice, plus tipping in a splash of vinegar over the long cooking chopsticks so it should be fine…he hopes.

The confidence has seeped out of him a little by the time he stands in front of the Jeons’ door, holding a container with the pancakes sliced into even quarters, the glass of it warm to the touch.

Wonwoo opens the door and blinks upon seeing Mingyu there with his long, lavender-grey tail tucked tightly behind his back.

“Hi? Mingyu, was it?”

“Hi Wonwoo. I made you the kimchi pancakes I said I would.”

“You made?” Wonwoo lifts an eyebrow and takes the container from Mingyu’s hands in a way eerily reminiscent of his father’s actions the day prior. He peers down before giving Mingyu another look. “How old are you that you can cook?”

Mingyu says ten and then follows Wonwoo inside the house as Wonwoo tells him that he’s a year older and Bohyuk a year younger and leaves Mingyu to stare at the unopened boxes strewn around the house while he grabs chopsticks and plates. The place looks different from when Mrs. Park had lived here. Mingyu remembers it from his visits whenever his grandparents were in Anyang and she watched over him before his parents returned home from work. Her walls were covered in embroidery, which she said she did to pass the time and talk to herself since she had no one else to talk to. A lot of the people in the neighborhood avoided Mrs. Park because she still had her ears, but Mingyu’s grandmother liked her so Mingyu did too. Now the walls have family portraits, and there’s a sense of occupancy that Mrs. Park could never achieve from living on her own.

“Do you want any?” Wonwoo asks, holding a plate out and startling Mingyu into looking back at him with wide eyes.

“Oh no, I can make some and eat them whenever. These are for you,” Mingyu says brightly, pulling his chair right up to the dining room table and resting his elbows on it. The table is different too; Mrs. Park had a tiny white square that seated four, the Jeons’ have a long rectangle with slightly rounded edges that could probably seat eight.

Wonwoo doesn’t say anything before lifting up a piece and taking a careful nibble. When it doesn’t reveal much of the flavor he takes another, larger bite. After chewing, he shoves the rest of the quarter into his mouth and swallows it all down before telling Mingyu, “These are actually pretty good.”

Mingyu’s tail starts wagging almost instantaneously. “I told you, I make killer kimchi pancakes.”

“Alright. Bohyuk ate four of the seafood ones in one sitting yesterday instead of eating any rice with dinner, so I figured these would be okay.”

Okay is an understatement. Mingyu taste tested before he came over and his grandmother wouldn’t even be able to tell that he didn’t use overripe kimchi. “Where is Bohyuk, anyway?” He swings his legs over the edge of his seat and his toes skim the cold tiled floor.

“At boarding school.”

“Boarding school?”

“For competitive swimming,” Wonwoo affirms. “We only moved here so he could come home on weekends.”

“But you don’t go to boarding school?”

“No.”

“Is that because you don’t swim?”

“I can swim but,” Wonwoo shrugs. His tail twitches against the leg of his chair and Mingyu can sense the vibrations from his cat ears.

“But it’s not your thing. What’s your thing, then? Running?”

Wonwoo recoils, pancake dangling in his mouth preventing him from making a disgusted expression but Mingyu gets the memo. He chews, swallows. “I read, sometimes.”

“Reading’s cool. Um, as for me, I like to cook.”

Wonwoo looks at him, and then starts choking on his food because the swallowing interferes with his laughter. “Obviously.”

 

* * *

 

When Mingyu finally graduates elementary school to attend the same middle school as Wonwoo, he’s half a head taller than the next tallest person in his class, with an equally long tail to match. He keeps his ears flattened against his head in order to appear a little bit shorter, but he still sticks out, whether it’s in the hallways or during phys ed. It’s a mixture of his height and his efforts to avoid being seen, like sitting in the back of the classroom, that get him pegged as the token guy to beat up in order to assert dominance on the rest of the grade. It doesn’t help that Mingyu resists smiling, lest the canines make things worse. The problem is that it makes the class bully think that Mingyu’s scowling at him.

He holds his tail close and takes the punches to the gut where the bruises won’t be seen.

 

* * *

 

There’s no way for Wonwoo to know that Mingyu’s become a punching bag. The trio of attackers are smart enough not to touch Mingyu’s face. On their walk home together (suggested by Mrs. Jeon after it was confirmed that they would be attending the same school) Wonwoo misses the edge of the curb, not looking at where he’s going because his nose is stuck in a worn copy of _My Mother’s Castle_ , and when Mingyu reaches out to steady him, he gets an elbow to the ribs and goes careening to the ground.

“Oh,” Wonwoo says, lifting up Mingyu’s shirt to reveal angry red splotches amidst purple bruises and yellowing ones fading from last week. “This is why you’ve been so quiet lately.”

“Huh?” Mingyu looks up at Wonwoo with a dazed expression before shoving his shirt back down over his stomach, an equally angry and red blush spreading across his cheeks. He ducks his head, tail curling in to keep the fabric down and ears as flat as he can make them go.

Wonwoo waves his hand in the air, and the book pages flap in the wind. “I don’t mind the quiet because it’s easier to read, but normally you want to, I don’t know, talk about how the day went and stuff like that. But since school started you’ve been pretty quiet about that so I thought you grew up. Wishful thinking, huh?”

Mingyu laughs and doesn’t hold back the wince at the pain from his chest expanding.

“Can you stand?”

It takes a few tries, namely because every time Wonwoo reaches out a hand to steady him, he accidentally prods another bruise and they lose their progress. Eventually he sticks out an arm and lets Mingyu clamor up to his feet by himself, his tail supporting Mingyu’s hip where there have been no hits thrown.

“You better come over so we can bandage you up.”

Mingyu shakes his head, his ears twitching in horror at the thought of letting someone see the shape he’s in _twice_.

“Well, would you rather your parents see? Your grandmother?”

At that, Mingyu acquiesces.

 

* * *

 

The next day Wonwoo shows up at the door to Mingyu’s classroom at lunch, with his frail bones and bushy tail. He hand-waves an explanation about some library-related task, and leads Mingyu to an alcove between two back bookshelves. Wonwoo’s made a nest of the place, from mis-matched couch cushions stolen from various sofas around the school to the extra book lamp clipped to a ledge not far off the ground, and an entire stack of books, some written in English, others Korean, and still others exclusively in Hanja.

“This is my secret spot,” Wonwoo confides conspiratorially.

“Not so secret anymore.”

Wonwoo slaps Mingyu’s arm and then gives him a guilty look, reaching out with one hand like he can take it back by absorbing the force with his fingertips. Mingyu shakes his head. It hadn’t hurt much, and besides, a tiny smack is a fee he’s wiling to pay for the quiet safety of Wonwoo’s library nook.

For a few moments, Mingyu twiddles his thumbs aimlessly, inspecting each of the dusty books on the shelves with a closer eye than he’s had on any book in his life. The fidgeting gets to Wonwoo sooner than later, and he’s tasked with doing geometry review. “You’ve been able to pass each grade automatically so far but you have to take an examination to get into high school, you know. How awful would it be if you didn’t pass?”

Not that awful, in Mingyu’s opinion. He could could go to some low-tier place, graduate with his diploma, and then never have anything to do with education again, working as a chef in some restaurant kitchen and saving up money to open up his own. That was the plan, anyway, until Wonwoo knocked it over with his insistence that Mingyu read something other than a comic book.

It’s an exercise of Mingyu’s attention span. After every few pages, whenever he hits the end of a section, Mingyu’s tail flaps heavily onto Wonwoo’s, and he gives him a sad pout in hopes that he had done enough. After the first time, when Wonwoo had actually looked up in concern that something was amiss, Wonwoo simply yanks his tail out from under Mingyu’s and smacks him back, usually on the knee or somewhere it doesn’t really hurt. And the cycle repeats, over and over again, until the bell is about to ring and Mingyu, fed up with learning so much about triangles, parries Wonwoo’s blow and the two of them get into a rather childish tail fight.

“That’s cute,” calls a voice. Then, a head appears. It’s a very blond head, with equally pale ears, and a huge sleek tail. “Anyway, time for class!”

“Thanks, Soonyoung,” Wonwoo mutters, before flinging Mingyu’s tail off his own and shooting him a dark look.

“I thought you said this was a secret place?” Mingyu remains seated while Wonwoo packs up his class things.

“Sometimes I fall asleep so I need someone to find me in case the bell rings and I’m not there,” Wonwoo says. “I lose track of time.”

“Did you bring me here to be your timekeeper? I know I’m younger but that doesn’t make us all automatically your slaves, Wonwoo-hyung.”

“You? Do you even know how to read a clock?” Wonwoo snorts. “It amazes me that you can manage to make sure things don’t burn on the stove, you know.”

“That’s…” Mingyu pouts, unable to express his annoyance in words. His ears stick up sharply, stiff and straight into the air, and his tail goes up taut behind him while they walk down the hallway. That’s not a fair judge of character, not when he’s cooked so often for Wonwoo, and it’s not like his ability to wake up in the morning is because he can’t tell the time. He huffs and crosses his arms, the tip of his tail whipping away Wonwoo’s hand when it gets close. “Then why? Just to annoy me into studying?” Or because—Mingyu knows what answer he wants to hear.

Wonwoo doesn’t reply at first, his eyes circling around to quickly examine all of Mingyu’s classmates gathered around the room. “Yeah, to annoy you into studying,” Wonwoo says eventually, eyes peeling away from a group in the corner to look at Mingyu again. “See you later,” Wonwoo says, and his tail slides against the back of Mingyu’s thighs when he turns around, because he’s been holding it so close to Mingyu the entire time.

The words are a lie, but Mingyu’s too busy trembling at the burn on his legs to remember to call Wonwoo out on it.

 

* * *

 

When Mingyu is fifteen, Bohyuk makes the city finals in three freestyle events and it feels like their entire street shows up at the Olympic-sized pool to cheer him on. Mingyu gets to the event a little late after finishing up with cram classes for high school entrance exams and doesn’t have to search hard to find his family. Minseo’s painted her ears and tail blue and white to match Bohyuk’s school colors, and Mingyu’s parents each hold a massive foam cut-out of a hand. Bohyuk’s parents have bullhorns and the Lee family have choreographed their kids to do a complete pom-pom routine.

It takes some neck craning to find Wonwoo.

Seated up near the rafters, in the absolute top row, Wonwoo hangs over the railing with his arms crossed over his chest and tail curled around the pole behind him. He blinks quickly, seemingly awake, but doesn’t notice Mingyu’s presence until they’re nearly side-by-side.

“Not excited for Bohyuk to win?” Mingyu asks, sliding into the spot beside him.

“What kind of brother do you think I am?” Wonwoo asks, a little angrily. It’s the first time they’ve spoken in a while, now that they no longer go to and from class together, or sit silently in the library teasing each other with their tails. Wonwoo’s barely at home and when he is he has to study, and Mingyu doesn’t have time to cook elaborate sets of meals these days anyway. He isn’t prepared for the hostility.

“Sorry…bad joke?” Wonwoo’s the kind of older brother who would open up the only space he could call his own to someone not even related to him by blood just because he was getting a little bullied. And then walk around with his tail hovering around said not-relative in case anyone tried again. And then pretend it was just nothing. But they both knew that. “I’m just surprised you’re sitting so high up.”

“I hate water,” Wonwoo says sharply, squeezing his eyes shut for several beats and then returning to his rapid blinking. That explains the enmity, a bit, and why he’s sitting here when it’s so incompatible with his norm. It’s very cat like of him, Mingyu supposes, to dangle near the edge of discomfort and stare at his enemy, the pool, with bright eyes, sharp and tapered at the ends, loathing radiating from his pupils, abandoning his fear of heights in the face of a greater foe. “And the chlorine smells awful.” Wonwoo’s face crinkles, his eyebrows furrowed and nose wrinkling while the folds of skin on either side of his mouth crease deeply.

“I have an idea.”

“Here we go,” Wonwoo mutters, but he gets to his wobbly feet and follows Mingyu when he slips out the door to the upper gallery.

Wonwoo takes a deep breath on the other side. “I was getting nauseous.” The chlorine smell permeates through the air in the entire building, but it’s less strong when not in direct contact with the water. Mingyu watches Wonwoo rubbing at his nose out of the corner of one eye, and then focuses back on the hallway in front of him when Wonwoo seems to notice the spectating.

“Through here,” Mingyu says, after three stairwells and several empty corridors. Everyone’s too busy paying attention to the swim meet to be loitering around outside, and, as he expected, the lifeguards’ staff room in the back corner of the pool is deserted. He throws himself into a large cushioned swivel chair, and kicks his feet up onto the desk. The pool is just through another door, but the distance keeps the smell at bay, and they can’t see anything from here, not with the crowd blocking their view.

“I think this is called trespassing,” says Wonwoo mildly, taking a seat as well. “How are we going to watch from here anyway?”

Mingyu raises his chin to point at the tiny television screen in the corner playing surveillance feed. Several specks of moving light in the water represent the bodies of the swimmers, blurry but distinguishable by lane.

Bohyuk gets a bronze medal in the 200m free, silver in the 400m, but places 6th in the 800m. “He’ll be disappointed with that.” Wonwoo shakes his head, grinning. It’s a different standard, Mingyu would be amazed if he could qualify to be on any of the school’s sports teams even with his height advantage in basketball, but Bohyuk would be disappointed with anything less than best in the city. The thought makes Mingyu smile too.

“How long do you think they’ll be out there celebrating?”

Wonwoo shrugs. “They still have to do the medal ceremonies.”

“You know, the entire building’s control panel is right here,” Mingyu points out, egging Wonwoo with waggling eyebrows and a toothy grin. “Imagine if the lights all suddenly went off or something.”

“Imagine if you got caught,” comes the gruff unfamiliar voice of someone who’s actually supposed to be there.

They bolt, whooping down the hallways, skidding sideways around a corner and laughing at the huffing and puffing earless old man chasing them with a broom in one hand. It’s futile for him; Mingyu and Wonwoo have in their hands a much more powerful weapon - their youth.

 

* * *

 

Some time later that year, Mingyu starts having a recurring dream. It starts out as a nightmare – he’s back in first year of middle school again, being punched by people whose faces he can’t discern. But these ones don’t ignore his face, they hit him everywhere, and leave scratches with their fingernails. Once Mingyu thinks he can’t bear the pain anymore, they leave him, whimpering on the ground in a ball with his tail curled around his body, hugged tightly to his chest, ears battered and torn and matted with blood.

They perk up at the sound of footsteps. It’s always clear footsteps, even though rubber soles on pavement shouldn’t really sound like the fall of a heel on tile, but Mingyu hears them and he’s being pulled to his feet. The next thing he knows, he’s sitting on Wonwoo’s bed, the sheets covered with the Pororo characters he liked years ago, with his shirt off. Wonwoo applies a cool gel to all of the open wounds with a cotton swab, covering them with gauze and tape one at a time, slowly, methodically, with careful hands. There’s a different cream for the bruises, and this Wonwoo rubs into Mingyu’s stomach with his hands, watching his face instead of his ribs for grimaces of pain. His fingers are light on Mingyu’s skin, at once cool and warm, and when they get to a particularly tender area, Wonwoo keeps him calm with his tail, gently lowering Mingyu’s own and entwining them together for comfort.

“Wait,” dream Wonwoo whispers, when Mingyu extricates himself to stand and go home. “I still have to do your face.”

He pushes Mingyu back down onto the bed and straddles his knees, a damp towel in one hand patting gently at the dried blood. Mingyu fidgets as he stares into the dip where Wonwoo’s neck meets collarbone, his tail squirming restlessly against the duvet. Wonwoo quashes it with his own, his eyes not once leaving the cut along Mingyu’s temple, where he applies a flexible fabric bandage.

“Just a little more,” Wonwoo says, the air from his voice brushing the fur on Mingyu’s ears. He pats the top of his head, thumb stroking down a patch of unbroken skin and making Mingyu shiver. “We’re almost done, I promise.”

Mingyu relents, and coils the tip of his tail around Wonwoo’s, tightening whenever the medicine stings.

Wonwoo spreads ointment over the gash on Mingyu’s cheekbone, blowing gently before sticking on another bandaid. He scoops out an ample amount of cream and spreads it over the corner of Mingyu’s left jaw, tongue poking out between his teeth in his care to cover every discolored area without causing more pain. The last injury is Mingyu’s split lip, extending from halfway between his nose and mouth down to the underside of his upper lip. Wonwoo clucks his tongue while coating it with salve and then blows air across it to help the lotion dry. Mingyu’s skin rises with gooseflesh.

“Hm.” Wonwoo blows gently on the cut again, incognizant to Mingyu’s shudder. “I can’t put a bandage over your mouth. What am I going to cover it with?”

Mingyu whimpers, it doesn’t need to be covered, he just wants to go home.

“I have an idea,” Wonwoo says, breath ghosting against Mingyu’s mouth. He leans forward to cover Mingyu’s lips with his own and Mingyu wakes up to wet sheets for the fourth time in a week.

 

* * *

 

When Mingyu starts high school, there’s a new foreign boy in their class who doesn’t speak much Korean. Mingyu can see the eyes of all the bigger guys swivel back toward Xu Minghao and his accent just from announcing his presence at role call. It’s the same predatory look they had all gotten when they had seen Mingyu in middle school with his long limbs and long tail, and there was no way Mingyu was going to let it happen to someone else, even if it meant putting himself at risk to be beaten up for another three years.

He pushes his way through crowds of people, getting lost in the unfamiliar building at least twice before he finds them in a side alley behind the main building that connects the shed from the sports field. Mingyu doesn’t go in with a plan, but it turns out he doesn’t need to because instead of watching one kid get kicked while he’s already down, he’s watching one kid kick the asses of four others, taking each of them down with a steely reserve and martial arts skills Mingyu wishes he possessed three years ago.

“You too?” Minghao asks, beckoning him closer with a wave of his fingers, like he’s expecting Mingyu to fight.

“No!” Mingyu yells, sounding strangled. “I was trying to make sure you didn’t get beat up, but it looks like you didn’t need my help.”

“Help?” Minghao parrots, tilting his head to the side.

They work it out through some gesturing, Mingyu pointing at one of the guys moaning on the ground, and then indicating at a cut along his side that had healed over into a dark scar.

“Oh,” Minghao says, patting at Mingyu’s shoulder with some sort of comprehension. Even though he’s not the one that can’t speak the language or the target of the grade bullies, Mingyu feels that somehow, he’s the one being pitied.

 

* * *

 

He and Wonwoo don’t run into each other until the end of the week.

“You headed home now? Wanna walk back together?”

Mingyu lifts the basketball in his hands. “Finishing up a game, sorry.”

Wonwoo shrugs. “Come by after, I want food.”

“Ah, sorry hyung,” Mingyu rubs the back of his neck, trying and failing to spin the ball in one hand. “I said I’d study with Minghao later since he’s on his way to failing Korean.”

“Minghao?”

“Yeah, he’s the new kid from China in my class. Thought he was going to get beat up like I did but it turns out he knows a lot of martial arts so he’s really the friend to prevent me from getting beat up.” Mingyu laughs behind one hand, the basketball now under one arm.

“Alright,” Wonwoo says after a beat. He doesn’t laugh but he waves behind him when he walks.

Mingyu keeps laughing for a long time after, hysterically relieved that he won’t have to suffer restlessly in Wonwoo’s room.

 

* * *

 

That doesn’t mean they don’t interact outside the dangerous locale of Mingyu’s fantasies. Wonwoo drops his lunch tray down on the table beside Mingyu, and starts stealing bits from his packed lunchbox without so much as a by-your-leave, and unnoticing of the surprised looks or hushed whispers from around them. The kids in his year are the only ones who notice the intrusion, and they probably think Mingyu’s Wonwoo’s shuttle or something, the way his meal is being devoured without him.

“Aw, you two are together again! Still looking cute,” Soonyoung says, dropping his tray on the table too. It starts up even more muttering, that Soonyoung seems to revel in. He turns to strike a pose for a girl holding up her phone, ready for his picture to be taken.

“You’re weird,” Wonwoo says, giving Soonyoung a look of disgust, but he puts down his chopsticks and starts drinking from his own soup so Mingyu counts it as a win.

“Who are they?” Minghao mutters, sliding in beside Mingyu.

“Um.”

Before Mingyu can attempt to explain, Soonyoung busts out a loud coo that has Minghao’s eyes bulging out and sidling sideways. “Another cutie!” Soonyoung cheers, hands curled into fists by his cheeks. “I’m so glad I know you, Wonwoo-goon, you’re like a magnet for cute boys.” He reaches over to pat Minghao’s head, scratching behind his cat ears, and Minghao’s thin brown tail, poised to push him away, sinks at the genuine joy in Soonyoung’s eyes.

“Hi,” Minghao says, after all the hair petting.

Soonyoung nearly falls over himself, tapping at his own cheeks in delight. “Your voice! I can’t believe this! I didn’t think you could get any cuter but you proved me wrong. Can I keep you? Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes.”

“Yes?” Minghao tries, not understanding.

Wonwoo groans around a mouthful of (Mingyu’s) fried rice, his head falling forward into one hand. Mingyu nudges him with his tail for an explanation, and Wonwoo playfully pushes back. “We’re never going to save your friend now,” he mutters into Mingyu’s ear, “He just signed his own death wish.”

Soonyoung tsks. “What are you two lovebirds murmuring about now?”

“Soonyoung,” Wonwoo says sternly, and he manages to make a single name sound like an admonishment. “Anyway, wanna head back to mine after? I wanna watch the new Bond movie.”

“Sure, sounds good,” Soonyoung agrees.

“Ah, sorry hyung,” Mingyu finds himself saying for the second time in two weeks. “We have an algebra test next Monday and Minghao agreed to go over polynomial expansion with me in return for tutoring him in Korean.”

Wonwoo’s tail slaps to the floor with a muffled thud. He looks at Mingyu with an unreadable expression in his eyes. “Alright. You better study hard. And don’t come crying to me if you get yourself beat up for spending so much time in the library like a nerd.”

“It’s okay,” Mingyu says. “Minghao can fight them off.”

 

* * *

 

Mingyu gets really, really good at math.

 

* * *

 

When Mingyu’s in second year, Minghao auditions for Soonyoung’s dance club.

“It’ll be good for padding out my specs,” Minghao says, tossing out slang like he’s not just been in Korea for a year. “My Korean’s not going to become high ranked in the next year, but my Hanja and calculus marks are the best, so I might as well have fun.”

It turns out that he’s just as good at dancing as he is at martial arts because he gets accepted even without Soonyoung needing to convince the other exec, and carries with him an arsenal of trick moves that Soonyoung himself is eager to learn.

Mingyu suddenly finds himself with a lot of spare time, filling the silences with loud, obnoxious sighs that disturb the other library patrons more than the quiet whispering. He refines pencil spinning technique to perfection, staring down at pages of calculation questions that bore him now instead of terrifying him with how little he understood. It’s risky, but he goes home that night to make a stack of kimchi pancakes and shows up at Wonwoo’s doorstep the next day.

He figures, if they stay in the living room or the dining room, as long as he doesn’t take the stairs up to Wonwoo’s bedroom, he’ll be okay.

“You have the college entrance exam coming up, right?” Mingyu shoves the box of food under Wonwoo’s nose. “Let’s study.”

“Sorry Mingyu,” Wonwoo says, pushing the container back toward him. “Bohyuk’s home for his birthday so we’re going out to eat tonight.”

“Well, you can still put these in the fridge for later.”

Wonwoo turns his head behind the doorway, and then looks back at Mingyu, shrugging. “You can make them anytime, right? Why don’t you give these ones to your grandparents instead?”

Mingyu eats a piece of kimchi pancake while his grandmother scrapes a brush through the tangled fur at the end of his tail and wishes he had put in a little less kimchi juice. The vegetables were overripe today, and made the dish a little too sour. He doesn’t go back over to the Jeon house anytime after that.

 

* * *

 

The only empty seat at the dance recital after party is on a black faux-leather two-seater beside Jeon Wonwoo. Mingyu squishes himself into the cushions, tail wrapping over the arm of the sofa, and says hi to Wonwoo brightly while pretending that Wonwoo hasn’t shifted over to hug the edge of the couch as tightly as possible. Wonwoo nods at him, before burying his face in his drink, clear cider bubbling against the transparent plastic.

Soonyoung doesn’t see the scene as having no empty seats. He wiggles into a comfy position on Minghao’s lap and Minghao absently combs a hand through Soonyoung’s hair. Their tails link and wrap together like two threads in a thick cord of string, tightly wound. Soonyoung tickles under Minghao’s chin and giggles when Minghao retaliates by flicking one of his cat ears. “So, you two still look as cute as ever.”

“We don’t!” Wonwoo explodes. “We’re not together and we don’t look good together, I swear, Soonyoung.” He rises to his feet and storms out, chucking the still full cup into the trash bin and scaring a group close to the door with how loudly he bangs it shut.

“Now you’ve done it, Soonyoung,” Minghao hisses, inhospitably pushing the other off of him.

“I’m sorry. I know you aren’t together but you’re both very handsome.” Soonyoung says to Mingyu.

Mingyu waves a hand. The jokes are inoffensive, and he’s never really been bothered by them. It’s kind of a compliment, as long as he doesn’t think about the amount of laundry he’s had to do over the past few years.

“Excuse me,” Minghao interrupts.

Soonyoung laughs and pinches Minghao’s cheek. “I’ll fix it. And you already know you’re the most handsome.” He drops a kiss to Minghao’s cheek and takes off in search of Wonwoo. When he returns, half an hour later, he’s alone.

 

* * *

 

Mingyu doesn’t go to the third years’ graduation. Getting invitations to the event isn’t particularly difficult, and only requires that someone in the graduating class puts your time onto the guest list. There isn’t even a ticket price, and somehow, Mingyu’s always thought that he’d end up holding flowers from the Kim family out to Wonwoo at his high school graduation.

He doesn’t get an invite.

His family members don’t know the date, and don’t understand why Mingyu’s so quiet at dinner, staring blankly out of the big bay windows in the dining room and knocking over the soup ladle while reaching for the beans. His mom asks if he’s feeling okay and his dad says something about getting too excited for the break. Minseo raises an eyebrow at him, but can’t quite figure it out.

Minghao, of course, gets invited. For an anxious few moments, Mingyu’s stomach churns at the thought of how to bring graduation up, how to stay casual while wanting to know everything. Did Wonwoo nab valedictorian like everyone had been predicting for years? The topic of conversation comes up more organically when Mingyu notices Minghao no longer has his ears.

“You—”

“Yeah,” Minghao says a little abashedly. “It happened after grad but don’t you dare ask me about the details.”

“Okay,” Mingyu says. “Then tell me about graduation instead.”

Minghao’s not the first person in their class to lose their cat ears, not even close. Mingyu’s known some people who haven’t had their ears since middle school, and even though his mother sometimes clucks her tongue, he doesn’t think it really says something about a person. But when it’s someone he knows, it suddenly feels more real, and he wants to know what it was like, did they just fall off, did he still have them somewhere, what about his tail, is it weird walking around without his tail for balance, does it feel like you’re missing something because you can’t use your tail to hold onto things, do you feel lighter, is it—

Throughout Minghao telling him about the stuffiness of the gymnasium, Soonyoung winning an award for his dancing, meeting Soonyoung’s parents, and staying over at his house, Mingyu can only think about Mrs. Park, who used to live in the Jeon house, and still HAD her ears when she was well over sixty years old.

 

* * *

 

When Mingyu finishes the college entrance exam, his mother assumes that he’s suddenly got tons of time on his hands and sends him out for errands every other day. One of his assignments is to make and deliver samgyetang to Wonwoo “because his mother mentioned he caught a cold the last time I spoke to her.”

Mingyu spends the entire time cooking too angry at being ordered around to worry about actually seeing Wonwoo. By the time his head has wrapped around the idea, he’s forty minutes and a bus fare into the trek towards Wonwoo’s university, a little too late to head back but not too late for him to begin panicking.

His hand shakes when he shows people on campus the slip of paper with the address Mrs. Jeon had written down, asking for directions with a high-pitched voice. Once he finds the building, he stands in front of door 7A and looks up at the room number, down at the paper, up at the room number, down at the paper, quadruple checking that it’s the right place before knocking three times.

“Hi? Mingyu?” Wonwoo stares at him with glazed confusion in his eyes.

“Hi Wonwoo. Your mom told my mom you were sick so my mom told me to bring you this,” Mingyu says quickly. He doesn’t realize how fake the story sounds until he’s told it, but he doesn’t have to worry about coming off genuine when Wonwoo’s trying to come up with a fable of his own.

“That was last week. I’m not sick anymore,” Wonwoo says, even though his sinuses are congested and it changes the sound of his voice, which is lower and raspier than Mingyu’s ever heard it. Then Wonwoo coughs, and he has the decency to sigh and let Mingyu into his room.

Wonwoo’s room isn’t as messy as he expected. It also has bed sheets that Mingyu doesn’t expect, the Pororo characters fitted over the single mattress. Wonwoo seems to take Mingyu’s staring as judgement, and quickly explains that all of his more normal sheets are for a larger mattress and he didn’t want to go out and buy new sets when his old ones were perfectly functional.

“Do you have a microwave?” Mingyu blurts out, frantically tearing his eyes away from the bed to focus on something, anything else.

“Um, I have a microwave, and a stove, and a fridge, and an entire kitchenette down the hall.”

“Okay. That’s good. I was just making sure you had somewhere to heat up the soup.”

“Yeah, I do. Thanks.”

Mingyu nods, and then darts a miserable glance sideways to the bed.

“So…you’re headed to university next year too, huh?” Wonwoo says, a hand in one pocket. Mingyu doesn’t know if it’s the cold or something else, but Wonwoo looks small and tired and not at all like he belongs in this room even if it should be his second home.

“Yeah, I applied to the commerce program here too, actually. We can go to the same school again.” Mingyu grins, sharp teeth standing out.

“Commerce? But you’re bad at math.”

Mingyu stares at Wonwoo in horror. “I haven’t been bad at math since middle school.”

“I—” Wonwoo goes into a coughing fit.

Mingyu tentatively touches Wonwoo’s back with his tail, and when he doesn’t get thrown off, starts rubbing circles to help him breathe. “I used to be so bad at math though, so that must have been what stuck. Remember when you used to have to drill me on multiplication because I’d be doing geometry problems and forget how to multiply two numbers to get the area?” That had been back when they shared Wonwoo’s library alcove. Wonwoo had fallen asleep on Mingyu’s shoulder while he worked through the ‘12’s, and been surprised when Mingyu remembered to get them both back into class on time.

“That must be it,” Wonwoo says hoarsely. He takes a long drink from his water bottle, washing down the lie. That wasn’t it at all. The two of them hadn’t been alone like this since middle school, for one reason or another, and the distance is obviously a product of that.

“So, yeah, commerce for me. What’s new with you?”

It’s kind of a murky question – new since they last saw each other coming out of their houses at the same time back in the summer? Or new since they last actually talked three years ago?

“Me? There’s nothing new with me.” Wonwoo turns away to cough again, this time accompanied by a less violent wracking of his chest, and he pulls away from Mingyu’s tail when he tries to soothe his back again.

“Looks it,” Mingyu says. “You still have your ears.”

“Well, they’re not going to grow feet and walk off on their own, are they? You still have yours, too.”

“I didn’t mean for it to come off like it was a bad thing. I know someone who had their ears until she died when she was sixty-eight,” Mingyu says, Mrs. Park’s bushy white tail coming to the forefront of his mind again.

“I don’t think I want to die still having my ears at sixty-eight,” Wonwoo says, “but I also don’t think I want to lose my ears to someone who I decide I never want to see again half a year later.”

“Not everyone’s Soonyoung and Minghao,” Mingyu murmurs quietly. The two of them had broken up a semester into Soonyoung’s first term at college, neither of them capable of dealing with the time and distance of travelling between two cities if they wanted to see each other. “But all that marriage before ears and one partner for life stuff rarely happens either.”

“That’s not really the dichotomy I meant to set up, but you’re right, I guess.”

Mingyu leaves a short while later, when the silences grow too long and his heart too heavy.

 

* * *

 

Bohyuk, still with one more year of high school to go, qualifies for the national swimming championships with very legitimate odds of winning gold in at least one of his three events. There are rumours, as there always are with young athletes in any sport, that he’s the next big thing, the up and coming Park Tae Hwan. Bohyuk’s still got the tiger streak in him that he had the first time Mingyu met him, rejecting the label of becoming the next anything, because he was himself, Jeon Bohyuk, and didn’t need any one else making comparisons by way of introduction.

It’s harder to get tickets to nationals. They’re more expensive, for one, but there’s also more competition for them, because of the potential stakes. College scholarships, being scouted by professional coaches, the dangling possibility of making the Korean national team. Mingyu snatches tickets for his family by being on the computer at the right time, and shows up to look for the rest of the Jeon family, eyes headed immediately to the top of the gallery but finding only Mrs. and Mr. Jeon somewhere in the middle rows beside Minseo and their own parents.

He sticks around to watch Bohyuk steal gold in the 400m, and then skips out of the main pool for the other events. It feels right, for some reason to wander the empty corridors, pushing doors to see which ones will open while everyone else’s attention is turned elsewhere. The lifeguards’ staff room is unfortunately locked, but the entrance to the diving pool isn’t. It’s a little eerie how empty it is, but Mingyu strips down to his boxers and slides into the cool water, letting it hug him as he floats aimlessly, face down.

“What the fuck are you doing?” There’s a pair of hands grabbing at his waist, pulling him out, and Mingyu lifts his head out of the water, spluttering.

“Huh?”

It’s Wonwoo who drags him up over the ledge, depositing him not terribly gently onto the wet tiles, before lying on the ground beside him, chest heaving, and cat ears perked up and quivering. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Mingyu blinks.

“Were you _trying_ to drown yourself where no one else would find you?”

Not really. It was just a dead man’s float, which was kind of relaxing and muffled all of the shouting from the lane pool. The dark helped keep his mind off of things. “Why are you here? How did you find me?” Mingyu asks, feeling too tired to explain his own situation. He twists his tail on itself, wringing out some of the water, feels the rest of it air drying from his skin.

“I came for the medal ceremony and neither your parents or mine had any idea where you’d disappeared off to. Knowing your penchant for snooping around…I didn’t think you’d cause this much trouble though.”

“Sorry. I know you hate water.”

“Yeah, more than I hate heights, but less than I want to see you die, apparently.”

Mingyu inhales deeply, feeling his lungs burn with the chlorinated water and air. His tail falls down over his stomach. It seems a good time as any to ask, “Does this mean we can be friends again?”

Wonwoo sits up and pulls his clothes back over his still damp body. Mingyu watches the muscles in his back shift when Wonwoo raises his arm over his head, desperately clinging to the possibility of a positive answer. His ears flatten close to his head. Wonwoo raises a hand behind him and says, “I’ll go tell your parents you’re okay.”

 

* * *

 

Mingyu looks down at his own tail, lavender-grey. He imagines the strands slowly turning more grey than purple and then more white than grey. He imagines a little boy standing in front of a window, watching as Mingyu’s aged body gets stretchered out, tail a lifeless white and dying alone. Mingyu’s tail twitches and he holds it in his hands, presses it to his sternum. He doesn’t think about Eddy or Pororo or Crong, doesn’t run a finger along the raised skin of the scars on his abdomen, doesn’t squeeze his eyes shut or feel like every gust of wind in the room is a breath across his skin.

He also doesn’t cry, but that’s because he thinks it would be weird to spill tears over something he’s never actually had.

 

* * *

 

When Mingyu enters university, he’s determined not to let the past three years repeat themselves. He’s at the same school as Wonwoo, but it’s the last time in his life that he can say that before they go out into the adult world where there are no classes or logical connections to tether to them to each other. Even now, Wonwoo barely shows up on their street, and Mingyu’s moved away too. Not friends, not even neighbours.

Mingyu practices the words, “killer kimchi pancakes,” over and over again until they become nonsense syllables in his head. He stands in Wonwoo’s doorway in the early evening, his tail tucked inside a varsity jacket to keep warm against the chilly air.

“Mingyu, you have to stop making me pancakes. Go cook for a girl to be your future wife or something.” Wonwoo sighs, staring down at the containers in Mingyu’s hands with his ears drooping and tail sagged onto the floor.

“Can’t I decide who I want to make pancakes for?”

“In that case, I should be allowed to decide when I’m not interested in a friendship.” Wonwoo’s voice has always had a bit of a cold quality to it, especially when he’s tired. But most of the time, if you get him happy, he sounds warm, and kind, and like the kind of person Mingyu remembers from middle school, the kind of person who would try to keep you safe without telling you. But now, hearing the full brunt of Wonwoo’s frostiness, with words that sharp and cutting, Mingyu wonders if it’s not their relationship that changed. If it’s that Wonwoo changed, and that he’s not the same nice person.

“Why?” Mingyu whispers, tucked in on himself until he’s smaller than Wonwoo even if he’s really several inches taller. “Why did we stop being friends? Why don’t you want to be friends anymore?”

Wonwoo sighs again, and the disruption in the air is enough to tickle the skin on Mingyu’s neck. “Do you really want to know?”

Mingyu nods.

“If I tell you, will you stop coming over with food?”

Mingyu hesitates, but he nods again, tears brimming in his eyes.

“We weren’t ever friends. When we met, I didn’t think of you as a friend, I thought of you like another little brother. You were like Bohyuk, someone to watch out over, and to keep safe.”

“You’re lying,” Mingyu accuses. He can see it in the twitch of Wonwoo’s tail, can almost feel the lie like a physical burn across the backs of his thighs.

Wonwoo pauses to lean his head against the doorframe. He lifts the round spectacles off his nose and rubs at his eyes with one hand, the thin wiry frames reflecting the light from the hallway. “Okay, fine. so you weren’t like Bohyuk at all. You didn’t need an older brother to watch out over you. The more I saw that, the more I realized I didn’t want to keep you safe because I thought of you like a little brother. It was for a different reason entirely. Do you get it? That’s why we can’t be friends.”

“I don’t get it,” Mingyu says. “What’s the reason? Why can’t we be friends?”

“Because! Because I want to keep you safe because I loved you, and not in the way you love your friends.”

The door slams on Mingyu’s face, and the gust of wind that follows pushes all the fur on Mingyu’s ears back toward the wall behind him.

 

* * *

 

Mingyu wakes up the next morning after a night of Pororo and Wonwoo filled dreams, shoves his sheets into one of the empty laundry machines, and marches down to the second year dorms.

“You said ‘loved’, does that mean it’s not true anymore?”

Wonwoo, standing sleepily in a pair of Poby slippers, stares at Mingyu with disbelief. That slowly turns into irritation. “You agreed to stop coming over.”

“I agreed to stop coming over with food, but we can argue the semantics of that later, can you just answer the question? Love or loved, present or past, it’s important.”

“Do you want a taped confession to laud it over my friends or something?” Wonwoo asks, his voice devoid of emotion. It’s cold enough that it makes Mingyu’s tail pull instinctively to his torso, and he holds it against his chest for warmth.

“No, I want a confession to know whether or not I can confess back,” Mingyu says solemnly, staring into the dip where Wonwoo’s neck meets collarbone. His tail squirms restlessly in his hands.

 

* * *

 

When Mingyu is nineteen he spends the night sleeping in Wonwoo’s arms, his cat ears on either side of Wonwoo’s chin, their tails twined together. It’s one of the last times their tails can do that. Not long after, he wakes up one morning with his ears and tail gone, just vanished, along with Wonwoo’s as well. It does feel like he’s missing something. It feels like he’s suddenly missing a hand, and he forgets, especially in the kitchen, that he can’t juggle three things at once now that he’s lacking the extra means to hold things or poke things or tug at things. But it’s not so bad. If he’s lost one hand, he’s gained two, in the form of Wonwoo’s holding his.

   

   

**Author's Note:**

> I told Cherie Blossoms I would consider writing her a 1k WonGyu fic as a gift for a) her birthday and b) doing so well on her exams but honestly neither of those things apply anymore and this is clearly not 1k so um...  
> 
> 
> As always, written in a day and unbetaed so if you see any mistakes, please let me know!


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